Experimental Methods: Whole Roll, Single Subject Part I

Just a quick note regarding a fun method that I was introduced to by Don Anderson, one of my instructors in Monterey. Whole Roll, Single Subject is a technique where you plan to shoot an entire roll of film to make a photo mosaic of a single subject. Now there are lots of ways of making photo mosaics, but in this case you create the mosaic in your camera by planning the sequence in which you will shoot parts of the subject. Here is my example from St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral in San Francisco:




Camera: Minolta SRT-201 with normal lens
Film: Ilford ISO 400
(Please excuse the resolution problem, a good image size would be too large to post. Remember, these are 35mm frames)


Steps in the process:
1. Select an appropriate subject (buildings are easier to start with).
2. Think about your camera format and plan the shooting sequence
3. Load the camera of choice
4. Set up your tripod (much easier with a tripod)
5. Shoot !
6. Mount the developed film on a glass plate, emulsion side up, because you will want to place the film emulsion in direct contact with the paper.
7. Test for exposure and print

In my example I had to dodge and burn to even out the final print. Of course if I had been more conscious of the zone system I could have mitigated this problem by ‘placing’ each exposure in the proper zone (i.e. re-meter each shot, which for some reason I did not do).

There are some other ways to consider the Whole Roll, Single Subject approach, as I will demonstrate shortly.